📚ᗪO Tᕼᙓ ᙎOᖇK♡ (Summary)

Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way. Do you find yourself unable to finish a project? Perhaps your dream is to write a book, start a new business, or begin a new philanthropic endeavor. As you begin your… "Do the Work" Summary Introduction Resistance. What exactly is this monster? Let’s find out. Perhaps you want to pursue a calling in something like writing, painting, music, or dance. Maybe you want to launch a business, start a new diet, begin working out, break a habit, go back to school, run for mayor, or do anything that requires you to step outside your comfort zone. Why is it that whenever we try to attempt such endeavors we can never see it through? Why do we constantly fail? Well, any act that requires us to reject immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity will always be met with Resistance. Even worse, the characteristics of Resistance make it a force to be reckoned with. It’s invisible. It cannot be seen, heard, touched, or smelled. But we can feel it. It aims to shove us away, distract us, and prevent us from doing our work. It’s insidious. It will tell you anything to keep you from doing the work. It will assume any form to deceive you. It is impersonal. It’s not out to get you personally, it doesn’t care who you are. It’s simply a force of nature. It is infallible. Resistance is like a compass, it will always point to the true North - that calling or action it wants to stop you from completing. The more important our call to action, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. Resistance is universal. It never sleeps. It aims to kill. Everyone struggles with Resistance their entire lives, so when we begin to fight it, we enter into a war to the death. It’s time to learn how to fight back.

Chapter 1: Identify Your Enemies and Allies The first step in moving toward your goals is to identify your enemies and your allies. Those are the things that help you accomplish your goals and the things that get in the way. For instance, the right music might motivate you to go for a run but Netflix releasing that enticing documentary might hinder you from being productive. But before we discuss our enemies, let’s take a look at our allies, some of which might surprise you. Of course, one of our greatest allies is passion. Passion is what led Picasso to paint and Mozart to compose. As children, we have an infinite amount of passion. Next, there’s blind faith. Our mightiest ally is the belief in something we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or feel. When we have faith and passion, we feel as if we can accomplish anything in the world. Unfortunately, Resistance wants to destroy that faith and Fear wants to sap the passion out of you. But when we conquer our fears, we begin to discover a bottomless well of passion.

But what if I told you that some of our negative traits can become our allies? I’m talking about ignorance and arrogance. The key is to be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult a task is going to be and be cocky enough to believe that you can do it anyway. To achieve this state of mind, you must stay stupid. People like Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, and Winston Churchill were some of the dumbest guys, they didn’t allow themselves to think. They just acted with blind faith. Charles Lindbergh, for example, didn’t know how difficult it would be to attempt to fly across the Atlantic solo. He was constantly told that he would fail, his plane would crash, and that he would drown. He was too arrogant to believe them. But it worked. He went on to become the first person to fly from New York to Paris non-stop by himself. We also shouldn’t underestimate the power of stubbornness. Once you commit to action, the worst thing you can do is stop. And what will keep you from stopping? Stubbornness. When you are stubborn, you won’t quit. Steve Jobs, for instance, was notorious for being stubborn. Combined with his arrogance and blind faith, Jobs built one of the most innovative companies in the world, turning a garage project into a successful tech company.

Chapter 2: A Research Diet and the Three-Act Structure Will Help Get You Started When you decide that you are going to pursue your passion, what’s the first step? Planning. Many of us decide that we are going to start something new, so we research, ask questions, and try to put a plan together to ensure our success. According to Steven Pressfield, however, excessive planning only leads to failure. When we start to plan, we fill our minds with thoughts. Those thoughts then become chatter. The chatter becomes Resistance. Chatter comes from those close in your life who express well-intentioned caution, it comes from your teacher’s well-meaning attempts to train you on following the rules. It aims to hold you back. So don’t prepare and start before you’re ready. This may seem like impractical advice. How can you know that you even want to begin your project if you don’t do any research? Well, you don’t have to completely forego this step. You simply need to be put on a research diet. You’re allowed to read three books on your subject. No more. You aren’t allowed to highlight, underline, think, or talk about the documents later. You simply need to let the ideas percolate. Let the unconscious do the work. Research can become Resistance so limit the amount of research that you do.

Before you’re ready to begin, simply start doing the work. So if you want to become a writer, start by putting words and ideas on a page. You can go back and rewrite it later. “Better to have written a lousy ballet than to have composed no ballet at all.” When talking with writer and documentary maker Norm Stahl, Pressfield received some sound advice, Stahl said, “Steve, God made a single sheet of yellow paper exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel.” In other words, don’t overthink. Don’t overprepare. Instead, start outlining and outline it fast. On instinct. Boil down your story, new business, or philanthropic enterprise to a single page. Of course, this isn’t easy so Pressfield has laid out the Three-Act Structure to help. Divide the paper into three parts: beginning, middle, and end. The social media site Facebook, for example, can be broken down into three basic parts. First, Facebook was a digital commons area where anyone could create a personal page for free. The middle act allowed each page owner to determine who could access his or her page. In its end phase, Facebook became a worldwide community of “friends” who can interact with one another, communicate, and share virtually anything they want.

Another useful trick to help get you started is to simply work backwards. Begin at the end. For example, if you’re writing a movie, begin by identifying the climax. If you want to open a restaurant, begin by visualizing the experience you want your patrons to have. Figure out what you want to do; then work backwards from there. If you aren’t sure what you want your end goal to be, that’s okay too. Start with a theme. What is the project about? What will your movie be about? Your startup? Your book? Once you know that much, you can begin to visualize the end state. And once you know the end state, you can start taking the necessary steps to get there. Chapter 3: Fill in the Gaps Once you have a beginning, middle, and end it’s time to fill in the gaps. For instance, screenwriters pitch new movies by boiling their presentation down into the following: a killer opening scene, two major set pieces in the middle, a killer climax, and a concise statement of the theme. They’ve included the major beats, and you can do that, too. If you were to reinvent Twitter, then you would start with What Are You Doing Now?, the 140-character limit, and the Following. Next, you need to fill in the gaps, so you have the hashtag, the tiny URL, and then the re-tweet.

“Any project or enterprise can be broken down into beginning, middle, and end. Fill in the gaps; then fill the gaps between the gaps.” Of course, filling in the gaps sounds easier than it is. So let’s break it down even further. The process progresses in two stages: action and reflection. You must act then reflect and then do it again. In writing, the action is putting words on paper and reflection is evaluating what you have on paper. When it comes to taking action, forget rational thought. Instead, play like a child. You see, “Our job is not to control our idea; our job is to figure out what our idea is (and wants to be) - and then bring it into being.” So when an idea pops into your head, the answer is always yes. No idea is too crazy or off the wall! Don’t doubt what pops into your head, never say no and always say yes. As you begin to pour love and passion into your work, it’s time to keep working. Stephen King, for example, confessed that he works every day. That means holidays like the Fourth of July, his birthday, and Christmas. Essentially, the momentum is going and you don’t want to stop it. Think about how much time you can spare each day and keep working. As you work, take breaks once or twice a week to pause and reflect. Is your project staying on the theme? Is every element serving the theme? Make the necessary adjustments and keep working. Soon, you’ll be on a roll. Good things will be happening, ideas will be flowing, and your energy will be electrifying. Best of all, you’ll be having fun… until the dreaded wall hits.

Chapter 4: Overcoming The Wall Out of nowhere, fear begins to take over. Your self-doubt begins to take control and a voice in your head continues to spout negativity, telling you that “You suck!” Everyone who attempts to follow their passions will inevitably hit the wall and begin to experience fear. But that doesn’t make hitting the wall any easier. You’ve invested serious time and money, now what? Should you just give up and cut your losses? Your fear turns into panic and you can’t stop. As Pressfield states, “Welcome to Hell.” When you hit a wall, the first thing you should remember is to stay calm. Recognize that there is an enemy actively working against you. This enemy is unforgiving. It is intelligent, ruthless, and destructive. Its aim is not to obstruct or to hamper or to impede. It aims to kill. That enemy, however, is inside you. When Pat Riley was the coach of the Lakers, he used the term “peripheral opponents” to describe all the off-court forces his players would be facing. Forces like fame, ego, fans, press, sponsors, agents, etc. Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. It does not arise from your rivals, bosses, spouses, or children. It comes from within you.

This doesn’t mean that you are the enemy, you are not to blame for the voices of Resistance in your head. Everyone has had this voice in their head: Picasso, Einstein, Lady Gaga, and even Donald Trump. “You have a Resistance the same way you have a heartbeat.” You are the knight and Resistance is the dragon, and the dragon lives only to block you from reaching your goals and living out your dreams. You must battle the dragon to death. To do this, you’ll need to find love, love for your work and what you have created. When Resistance appears, you’ll need to put it to the test with two questions. The first is “How bad do you want it?” Are you just dabbling or interested in your work? Are you intrigued but uncertain? Or are you passionate and totally committed? If your answer is not passionate and committed, then you need to re-evaluate what you are doing. The second question is “Why do you want it?” Is it for money? Fame? Power? For fun? Technically any answer is correct, but you should feel as if you have no other choice. Nothing else will satisfy you. Only when you have that kind of dedication and persistence will you find the motivation to continue onward.

Chapter 5: The Big Crash Will Make you Stronger Just like hitting a wall is inevitable, you’ll also likely go through the Big Crash. Everything may be going along great. Your project is in high gear, you may even be able to see the finish line! Until everything crashes. Perhaps the bank pulls your financing or one of the stars in your movie checks into rehab. Now what? The worst part of the Big Crash is that nothing can prepare you for it. It arises out of nowhere but it is inevitable for every project. When author Steven Pressfield‘s newest book, a novel called The Profession, was completed after two years of work, he was so proud of it. He was so excited about it that he began to show it to the people he trusted. Not only did they hate it but they HATED it. Even worse, they were right. The book just simply didn’t work and the entire concept was flawed. While he would like to believe that he worked fervently over the next few days to get to book back on track, that didn’t happen. Instead, he crashed. He went into an emotional tailspin. He was lost. After several conversations with his colleagues, he was eventually able to improve the book but only after working on it for another year.

A crash doesn’t have to be the end of your project. In fact, crashes are good. A crash means that you have failed. It means that you’ve given everything you had but still came up short. This simply means that you have to grow. You are on the threshold of learning something and you become forced to understand what went wrong. How did you get here in the first place? Was it laziness? Did we assess incorrectly? “Whatever the cause, the Big Crash compels us to go back now and solve the problem that we either created directly or set into motion unwittingly at the outside.” When you experience the Big Crash, you begin to panic. But creative panic is good. It means that you are about to cross a threshold into something bigger and better. Think of it like a small child who begins to take its first steps away from her mother. She begins to venture forth, begins to feel the excitement and exhilaration, then finally freaks out and bolts back to Mommy. That is where you are, you’re growing. Next time, the child will venture even further. That panic was only momentary and is a natural part of growth. When you begin to near the end of your project, you’ll also experience the fear of success. This is often when you begin to experience the strongest forces of Resistance. That’s because it’s extremely hard to finish something. For instance, whenever Michael Crichton approached the end of a novel, he would begin getting up earlier and earlier in the morning. 

He’d begin at six, then five, then three-thirty, then two-thirty, driving his wife insane. He didn’t want to lose momentum, so he checked into a hotel and worked around the clock until he finished the book. “He knew that Resistance was strongest at the finish. He did what he had to do, no matter how nutty or unorthodox, to finish and be ready to ship.” In the end, all it takes is slaying the dragon just once. Slay the dragon once, and he will never have power over you again. Sure, the dragon will always be there and you’ll still have to battle him every morning. But the moment you’ve beaten him once, you’ll know you can beat him again. And that, my friend, will transform your life.

Chapter 6: Final Summary Once you’ve completed your project, kudos to you! Anyone who can follow their dream, hang tough, and see it through to reality deserves a round of applause. Whether you’ve lost forty pounds, kicked a smoking habit, survived the loss of a loved one or made your dream a reality, then congratulations. You should be proud of yourself for accomplishing something. “You have done what only mothers and gods do: you have created new life.” To do this, all it takes is a few strategies like identifying your enemies and allies, getting started before you’re ready, and staying focused and committed along the way. You’ll hit the wall, you’ll go through the Big Crash, but you must remember that each challenge is an opportunity for growth. Your love and passion for your work and what you want to accomplish will overpower the dragon that aims to stop you. You’ll defeat the Resistance and, in the end, you’ll have created the life you've dreamed of.

Learn why strategic choices can make or break your life. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy (2011) demonstrates why strategic choices are crucial for creating a successful and meaningful life. Taking good and bad examples from multiple… "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" Summary Introduction Do you live your life according to a strategic set of rules? Do you start each day with a plan or say, “Today, I will do this because that’s the best strategy for success!” If you’re like most people, your answer is probably no. That’s because most of us are too busy trying to survive each day to be bothered with strategic planning. We lose our keys, we miss the bus, we run late for meetings, and complain about our bad luck because we never implemented a strategy for maximizing our potential and success. The author observes that this is the primary reason why many people are so unsatisfied with their lives. According to his philosophy, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail! When you think about it that way, that’s a pretty scary concept! Even if we don’t wake up with a plan for the day, we never see ourselves as having planned to fail. But throughout this summary, we’ll explore the truth behind the author’s theory and learn why a plan for success is the crucial ingredient we’re missing in our lives.

Chapter 1: What is A Strategy? Have you ever thought about what a strategy really is? The author believes that many people make the mistake of confusing strategies with other things like “goals,” “plans,” or “targets.” When we make to-do lists or identify the things we would like to accomplish, we might erroneously assume that we have identified a strategy. But the truth is that a strategy is actually a different animal altogether! Why? Because a goal is where you want to be. A strategy is a plan for how to get there. To put this into context, let’s consider an example. The world is teeming with advice on how to make good decisions and improve your life and some of that advice is useless. But other tips — like the practice of developing SMART goals — are actually really helpful! The concept of SMART goals comes from another self-help author named Richard Duhigg. And Duhigg devised a system for prioritizing your time, making better decisions, and accomplishing your goals. He called that system SMART because SMART is an acronym for creating goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-specific. Here’s how it works: let’s say you’re working toward a big goal like losing weight or you’re focusing on some aspect of personal development. A goal like “Lose 100 pounds!” is a pretty tall order and it can be tough to know how to get started. And that’s where SMART goals come in. So, here’s how you can use that process to accomplish your goals. Start by making your goal specific. 

You might think that “lose 100 pounds” is pretty specific, but it’s actually quite vague. That’s because you haven’t specified how you intend to lose that weight or the timeframe in which you hope to do so. By contrast, “exercise every day for a week” is a very specific goal! This statement clearly articulates what you intend to do and when. So, once you’ve defined your specific goal, think about how you will measure it. In other words, how will you notice real, tangible results? How will you put your goals into practice? Your goal will become measurable when you add a qualifier like, “I will exercise every day for a week by running a mile around the neighborhood before I leave for work.” Now that you’ve put these steps into practice, you can turn your attention to the “A” in SMART: making your goal achievable. Can you lose 100 pounds if you exercise every day for a week? No. That’s not humanly possible. But if you run a mile every day for a week and repeat this practice over several weeks, then it certainly might be! You might also need to add other qualifiers, like supporting your running routine with a healthy diet and a trip to the gym, but these can be added to the “specific” or “measurable” parts of your SMART goal later on if needed. Once you’ve done that, the next step is being realistic. As we discussed in our analysis of achievable goals, some things — like losing 100 pounds in a week — just aren’t possible. So, make sure that you’re not committing to something that you literally can’t do. It’s important to set very realistic goals because, sadly, this is a common problem that many people experience.

All too often, people get caught up in the excitement of setting big, ambitious goals for themselves. They imagine that accomplishing that goal will change their lives and they put all their hopes and dreams into their fantasy of that goal. But if that goal is unrealistic, then it will never be anything more than a fantasy. Because you can run every day for a week and run as hard and long as you want, but you still won’t lose 100 pounds in a week just by running. At the end of the week, you would just be very tired and disappointed that you hadn’t accomplished your goal. But all of that disappointment could have been avoided by simply setting a more realistic goal! So, make sure that your goals are, above all, realistic. And last but not least, make sure that your goals are time-specific. Setting a deadline for your goals is crucial because if we leave it open-ended, we will naturally procrastinate. It’s only human nature. So, if your goal is to lose 100 pounds, find a realistic time frame that’s somewhere between a week and fifty years from now. (A month might be a better time frame!) Putting a deadline on your goal will help you to work towards it quickly and efficiently and that deadline will provide you with some added motivation. You can even set smaller milestones within your wider timeframe to give you a sense of motivation and accomplishment each time you reach a small milestone! And the best part is that you can implement the SMART strategy with anything from projects at work to personal goals!

What’s interesting about this example is that Duhigg never advertised his SMART system as being a specific type of strategy. But as you can see from the example above, that’s exactly what it is! By breaking down your goal and developing an action plan for accomplishing it, you’ve just created a strategy for success. So, this example illustrates the difference between a strategy and a goal and why you need a strategy if you want to accomplish anything. As you can see from the previous example, it’s easy to think of big, ambitious goals for yourself. But until you take action and start putting your ideas into practice, your goals will simply be unfulfilled dreams floating around in your head. And the author firmly believes that you have the power to make those dreams a reality. Chapter 2: What Makes A Good Strategy In the previous chapter, we learned what a strategy is. But now it’s time to evaluate the difference between a good strategy and a bad strategy so you can devise the most effective plan. As we can see in the previous chapter’s example, a good strategy utilizes SMART goals and action planning. But it also contains a few other key ingredients. The author observes that a good strategy is actually like a piece of popcorn. And if you’re wondering what a strategy could possibly have in common with a snack, you’re not alone! But if you think about a piece of popcorn, then you know that it has more layers than meets the eye. On the surface, it’s hard and round and puffy. It has layers of crunchy goodness. But all of those layers come from a single kernel. Before that kernel is popped, it just looks like a seed. But when you put that little “seed” of popcorn under enough heat and pressure, it blossoms to create something wonderful.

And the same is true of strategies. The author asserts that all strategies start with a kernel and within that kernel are three key components. Every good strategy contains the triad of a diagnosis, a policy, and an actionable plan. So, how do these components work? It starts with the diagnosis. This is very similar to the scientific method because the scientific method starts with a question about a problem. Likewise, the first step of any strategy begins when you ask questions about the problem at hand. For example, if your goal is to create a more successful and meaningful life, you might start by asking, “What’s holding me back? Why isn’t my life successful and meaningful now? And what can I do to get where I want to be?” Answering these questions can help you to diagnose the problem and find a simple answer to explain a complex situation. Once you’ve diagnosed the problem, you can begin to devise an action plan. In other words, when you know what’s wrong, your next step is figuring out how to fix it. You can start to develop your action plan by writing down a mission statement and a set of actionable steps that will help you realize your goal. Once you’ve successfully accomplished these steps, you can begin the final phase of your strategy development process: putting those actionable steps into practice. As you implement these action steps, remember that it’s important to make them clear, coherent, and on-brand. Your steps should never conflict with or contradict your action plan or your diagnosis of the problem. Rather, your three-part kernel should be seamlessly connected, with each step flowing into the next one for maximum effectiveness.

Chapter 3: Look to the Future to Gain an Advantage The author asserts that you can measure the effectiveness of any given strategy by assessing the competitive advantage it gives you. After all, if you want to be successful, you should make choices that will keep you ahead of the competition and ensure that you’re profiting from your superior strategy. If you’re not seeing any benefit from your strategy, it might be time to go back to the drawing board and re-work your strategy until it’s a clear recipe for success. The author also believes that anticipation is a key component of any successful strategy, so in this chapter, we’ll explore the relationship between anticipation and success. In this case, anticipation means that you are looking to the future and employing big-picture thinking to stay ahead of your competition. No matter what your goal is, no matter what industry you work in, you can apply these principles. So, how does anticipation work? And why is it beneficial? Well, the author believes that anticipating trends is a crucial skill for any aspiring visionary leader. Because if you want to succeed in today’s ever-evolving global marketplace, it’s not enough to simply be aware of the trends that currently exist. You must also have your finger on the pulse of society and be able to predict what’s coming next. However, anticipation doesn’t mean that you’re able to predict the future or that you should even try to do so. Instead, anticipation is all about awareness and quick thinking, both of which are crucial for the development of any successful strategy. But why is it so critical to be ahead of the game? The author observes that anticipation is vital because that quick thinking can save your company! It can also make you successful beyond your wildest dreams.

To put this into practice, let’s imagine that you have an idea at the same time as everybody else. For the sake of this hypothetical scenario, let’s say that the current trend is streaming music. Companies like Apple and Spotify predicted that this fad was on the rise and they got in front of it by developing music streaming platforms of their own. But you weren’t quite so aware, so you hopped on the bandwagon a little too late. So, when you design your own streaming platform, it’s not original and it’s not new. It’s just a third-rate competitor for Apple Music and Spotify. As a result, you’re unlikely to make enough to even cover your startup costs, much less turn a profit. So, your budding music company quickly fades from existence, along with your hopes, dreams, and self-esteem. You don’t want that to be you! So, let’s imagine an alternate reality. Instead of jumping into the music streaming craze right as it’s taking off, you come in as it’s winding down. Streaming music is the norm now; there’s nothing new and exciting about it. The market is poised for a new trend and you have a bright idea: what if, instead of just listening to your own music, you could share songs with your friends in real-time? What if an app allowed you to see what anyone in the world was listening to and let you enjoy that song with them? By calling up your best friend’s profile or Lady Gaga’s, you can listen along and compare your music taste to that of anyone else in the world. You could discover new songs, tell your friends you love what they’re listening to, and curate a following who loves you for your favorite tunes! This could be the next new trend in music and you become successful because you anticipated it.

As you can see from these two examples, anticipation makes the difference between success and failure. And the key component is to stay ahead of your competitors by at least six to nine years. Because although the example described above is hypothetical, if your revolutionary music app took off, it would take some time for other people to catch up. By the time other companies did their market research, designed an app of their own, and dodged all the copyright issues, you would have established dominance in the market and built a base of loyal customers. That means that companies who later seek to capitalize on this trend are ultimately developing knock-offs of your hit idea! Of course, that’s not to say that your idea will be foolproof or that you will be able to plan for all eventualities. Because your idea is ultimately being conceptualized and implemented by humans, it’s fallible in the way that all human beings are. So, while your idea may not be perfect and you may be subjected to some unexpected bumps in the road, you can see from this example that timing is everything. That’s why the key lesson from this chapter is to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest trends and prepare as much as possible.

Chapter 4: Final Summary Most people don’t have a strategy for living their lives. They simply muddle through each day by hoping they’ll get by somehow. But if you want to be successful, the author believes that you must plan for success. And that means developing and implementing a successful strategy. By learning about the key components of a successful strategy and applying them to your life, you can dramatically increase your success. It’s also important to identify the differences between a strategy and a goal and between a good and bad strategy. Once you understand these differences, you must also be willing to learn, anticipate, and adapt. You might have to go back to the drawing board to re-work your strategy sometimes, but that’s okay! Because when you employ the right strategy, you can be certain that your life is headed in the right direction.